2016’s sustainability highlights

Virgin Media’s sustainability vision is centred on our promise to use ‘digital that makes good things happen’. We have five sustainability goals which will keep us true to this vision through to 2020. Here are some of our highlights from the past year, across each of our goals;


Lower Impact: Grow our business without increasing our carbon footprint
As part of our commitment to alternative energy sources, 2016 saw our first on-site renewable energy project turned on. The installation of a Solar PV system at our Bristol site was a landmark achievement. Another big moment this year was announcing our biggest ever carbon emissions reduction in our annual sustainability report, which was acclaimed by press as ‘revolutionising sustainability reporting’ - we were the first to use Virtutal Reality to enable viewers to jump right into sustainability at Virgin Media.


Better Products: Improve the sustainability performance of every new customer product

In 2016 we created a scorecard tool that enables us to measure the environmental and social impacts of our products. A lot of work has gone into creating the scorecard and we hope to publish it, including the score for the Hub 3.0 (our latest WiFi box), in early 2017 so watch this space.



More inclusive: nurture an engaged and diverse, workforce
Highlights this year include joining forces with Virgin Group to march at multiple pride marches, delivering our first National Inclusion Week focused on disability and pledging to increase the percentage of women apprentices. But we want to do even more in 2017 so we’re working with Scope and an expert disability consultancy to understand how we can improve our approach to disability in 2017.


Boosting Business: Create opportunities for small businesses in the UK through digital
We are committed to using digital technology to support entrepreneurs through Virgin Media Pioneers. This year we supported the Pioneers community to submit applications to VOOM, and we launched a brand new website to nurture our online community. We also delivered a suite of masterclasses throughout Global Entrepreneurship Week to give members the skills they need to grow. 2017 will see Pioneers and VOOM join forces to give entrepreneurs the skills they need to grow, on an even bigger scale.


Transforming lives: Transform the lives of disadvantaged people
In 2016 our partnership with Scope went from strength to strength – some of my personal highlights include; our B2B customers collaborating to co-create innovations that support disabled people to live more independently, our innovations team trialing sensor technology at one of Scope’s schools to allow students to better control their environment and our charity week survey showing that 88% of our people that completed the survey now feel more confident talking to a disabled person. Our corporate donation and all the amazing fundraising our people have done since the partnership started in summer 2015 (all in this now totals a whopping £1,065,887*) really is transforming the lives of disabled people – click here to see our corporate and employee donations in action!


While 2016 has been a year of key achievements there is, as ever, so much more we need to do. In 2017 you can expect to see us keeping our eyes even more firmly focused on the 5 goals.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on our achievements in 2016 – please tweet us using #VMSust.

Thanks and happy Christmas

Katie


*as at Nov 30th, 2016